Daughter of China

by C. Hope Flinchbaugh

Bethany House, ISBN: 0-7642-2731-9, PB, 282 pp.

Eighteen-year-old Kwan Mei Lin dreamed of attending Shanghai University to become a teacher. She looked forward to seeing more of the world than her tiny Chinese village, and , when he's not watching, she peeks at her handsome young friend, Chen Liko. However, she learns from her grandmother that her mother's Christian faith cost her imprisonment, illness, and death.

When their house church is raided and her pastor and father of her close friend, Chen Liko, is arrested, Mei Lin comes to the attention of Cadre Fang who offers to help her fulfill her dreams in exchange for his courtship. Mei Lin must balance her rejection of Cadre Fang with her humble hopes.

Her faith is tested when Mei Lin decides to share her faith at her school by passing out tracts. Young people in another village have not suffered, but she discovers that her faith comes with a cost: rebuke, expulsion, arrest, and torture.

Daughter of China takes the reader into the illegal house churches of modern China and into the heart of a young woman confronted with the price of her faith. From the life of a small rural village to a prison to the scandal of Chinese orphanages, Mei Lin sweeps the reader along as she faces challenges to her belief in Jesus Christ.

Hope Flinchbaugh's style is reminiscent of Janette Oake's and will appeal to Oake's readers. Written in the first person, Daughter of China looks deep into the heart of one who must risk paying the ultimate cost.